“This is a temporary repair,” Wyoming Department of Transportation Resident Engineer Bob Hammond said of the Teton Pass reconstruction process this summer in an interview with SVI Media.

“We started right after the land slide and got it done in a miraculous three week time span, with strong efforts from the contractor and the pride of their crew to get it done as quickly as possible to help everyone out.”

For Hammond and his Jackson WYDOT crew, along with contractors, the priority was bringing the commuter traffic over the pass from Teton Valley and into Jackson as soon and as safely as possible.

During the pass closure the Teton Valley commuters were joining the Star Valley commuters at Alpine resulting in thousands of vehicles congesting the Snake River Canyon every morning and evening. All of the commuter traffic was combined with heavy summer tourism traffic.

“That is a temporary road.,” Hammond continued to explain for SVI. “We are actually working on a permanent fix.”

RELATED: LISTEN TO THE FULL JULY 29 AUDIO INTERVIEW HERE –

And work on the new road is already underway with engineering and design and construction, pending weather, expected to be complete by November.

“The temporary road — we built in the proper fashion with engineers, geologists and the contractor to make sure it was safe,” Hammond said of the work done earlier this summer. “It is not on top of anything that will slide, it is safe. But we want to put the road back in it’s original alignment that was here before.”

The road that is under design now is design for long term service.

“We are looking at a 75 -ear design life on this. This is what we do for bridges,” he said.  “We will stabilize the ground underneath with the native soil. Once we stabilize that solid ground we will build another fill on top of that. That fill won’t be regular.
We will use a lightweight fill because when we are dealing with landslides, the lighter the fill, the less the driving force pushing down for a landslide.”

RELATED: COMMUNITIES RECONNECT AFTER TETON PASS OPENS –

Hammond continued, “We will not only stitch the ground together, which is a good resisting force but we will have a heck of a lot less driving force to try to push that down so we will have a good safe road.”

Hammond acknowledged the WYDOT crews for understanding the pass, backed by years of experience with maintenance.

“We know Teton Pass. We plow it every winter. We don’t want people on a steeper slope and tighter curves. We want to get them back onto a good solid original alignment which has a little less grade like before but also better curves.  The curves that are there now are great for the summer and the fall. But once things start to get slick with the snow and ice we want to get them on a more gentle curve.”

The Jackson community and government leaders honored WYDOT for their rapid response with community lunch at the Elks Lodge. Gov. Mark Gordon and WYDOT Director Darin Westby attended the lunch and toured the slide reconstruction site.

The slide construction was not the only active on the pass this summer.

RELATED: (VIDEO) AERIAL LOOK AT THE ROAD COLLAPSE OF WYO 22 OVER TETON PASS –

WYDOT and contractors were addressing a nearby mudslide on WY 22. A second and separate team from WYDOT with contractors cleaned and installed new culvert work.

The detoured traffic also allowed for accelerated work on the Snake River Bridge, under construction this summer.

Hammond summarized, “The Highway Dept. Director and the Governor came in and we gathered at the Elks Club, not just the WYDOT crew but the contractors. We had two contractors, one to put in a box culvert at the mud slide and we had a contractor out there doing the temporary road and the contractor doing the bridge over the Snake River. We accelerated work there at the same time to get the road open and working better, once the pass was open.”

Not resting this summer WYDOT turned their attention to the final product.

“We were working 24-hours a day on the temporary road and now our designer is working weekends to get this [new] road designed,” Hammond concluded. “When we are back under design for this permanent road it will be double shift all the way through until the end.”